and we're joined by viet thanh nguyen, the pulitzer prize-winning author of "the sympathizer" now hastten a book called "the displaced: refugee writers on refugee lives." ode to joy was carefully chosen you. viet: this was the song -- ariel: this was the song we would sing in the streets of santiago. people would sing this as the tega bombs fell on us and they beat us up, they put us in jail, they exiled us, they did terrible things. about the fact that during 17 years after september 11, 1973, very slowly, the chilean people took over the country and finally got rid of the day hader -- dictator in a nonviolent revolution. we defeated pinochet. pinochet also defeated us because policies continued on and on and his legacy is always there, some memories important to me in that sense, but this is a hymn people would sing in the streets of center iago as they were being -- santiago as they were being beaten by police. it moves me in normal sleep. it took a while for me not to -- in norma sleep. not forme a while tears. i'm very sentimental about these things. amy: you related the cia-back

viet thanh grew thnguyen, welco the program. >> thanks for having me. >> what was it that sparked -- what moved you to get involved in this highly polarized debate? >> i've always been interested in refugees and immigrants because i am a refugee and, of course, right now in the united states we're going through a moment of high anti-immigrant and anti-refugee feeling so it was recent actions on the part of the trump administration, john kelly calling undocumented immigrants uneducated and a harm to american society and jeff sessions arguing for the removal of children from undocumented immigrants and these are crises in our society that i wanted to respond to. >> and before i play this john kelly soundbite to remind everybody what you're talking about, just remind us of your story. obviously it's a long story, but you are a refugee, an immigrant. you came with your family from vietnam, right? when was it, how difficult was it to assimilate back then? >> well, it was 1975, i was four years old, my parents were in their 40s and the vietnam war ended and we were on the losing side so we

viet thanh nguyen: poorer in 19in the 1960s, it was poorer than south vietnam. it had just been devastated by the korean war, which killed about 2 to 3 million koreans, and was carpet-bombed by the ununited statetes. now, of course, korea, south korea, is what it is. but it'sthat history is tied in with the vietnam war. that history has almost been completely obliterated. now,w, i talk about cambodia and laos because i think a lot of americans don't even know the war was fought in cambodia and laos, , don't know thahat 3 miln vietnamese people died i in the war. but 3 million cambodians and laotians died during the war and afterwards. and it's important to bring this up, because americans,s, when ty feelel guilty, will l say, "ok,e know that t in vietnam it's cacd the american war. so maybe we should call it that." and i'm saying even that is not sufficient, because the vivinamese who call it thehe american war don't want to think about what they did in laos and cambodia, and what they still do there today. so, thinking of war in just these binary terms of vietn